Crucify Him

Matthew 27:22-23 (NIV)

“What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?” Pilate asked.  They all answered, “Crucify Him!”  “Why?  What crime has He committed?” asked Pilate.  But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify Him!” 

Every time I think of crucifixion I am horrified.  The history of humankind is filled with unbelievably horrible execution methods, but crucifixion might be the most horrible.  Some believe that since Jesus was being sacrificed for all the sins of the world, the mode of suffering and death had to be equal to the awfulness, evil and contempt of sin.  It’s just too horrible and cruel to comprehend.

Many years ago, during a Sunday morning Bible class, I chose to read C. Truman Davis M.D. “A Medical Description of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ” that you can easily find on the internet.  The description, while not sensationalized, was still so shocking that one man came up to me afterwards and berated me for daring to expose those in my class to such awful detail.  While I still don’t believe that I did anything wrong, I never shared that description again. 

Of course, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” exposed millions of people to the visual brutality that our Lord experienced and how He suffered what many call the most cruel and most humiliating form of punishment ever devised.  As humiliating and horrible as movies and descriptions of crucifixion are, none of them even dare to show that victims of crucifixion were naked, a thought that abhors even the most unperturbed mind.  All this makes it all the more amazing that God in the form of the Son would allow Himself to be sacrificed in such a cruel and humiliating way for the sins of the world.  Also, all the horror of crucifixion should remind you of the grievousness of sin in the God’s sight.  As Dr. Davis concluded, “Thus we have seen a glimpse of the epitome of evil which men can exhibit toward man -- and toward God. This is not a pretty sight and is apt to leave us despondent and depressed. How grateful we can be that we have a sequel: A glimpse of the infinite mercy of God toward man -- the miracle of the atonement and the expectation of Easter morning!”  Think hard about this.      

Why did people want to crucify Christ?  What did He do that deserved suffering and death?  Nothing, other than anger the Jewish leaders for exposing their hypocrisy.  In turn the Jewish leaders incited the rest of the crowd.  Yes, it was meant for Christ to die, but His death also implicated hypocritical leaders and clueless followers.  You must evaluate yourself both to make sure as a leader (business, family, neighborhood, society, church, etc) that you are not a hypocrite and as a follower of other leaders that you are not a victim of false teaching and deceptive leadership.